


Pure

by sigo



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Plug, Anal Sex, Armitage Hux Has Issues, Blow Jobs, Bottom Armitage Hux, Bottom Kylo Ren, Come Swallowing, Come as Lube, Coming Untouched, Darth Tantrum and his Evil Space Ginger, First Time Topping, Forced Orgasm, Group Sex, Human Sacrifice, Idiots in Love, Kylo Ren is a Mess, M/M, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn, Ritual Sex, Simultaneous Orgasm, That's Not How The Force Works, The Force, The Force Ships It, Top Armitage Hux, Topping from the Bottom, Vaginal Fingering, What have you done now Hux
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:20:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25005316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sigo/pseuds/sigo
Summary: Hux stopped outside Ren’s door. The idea of starting a fight was suddenly too appealing to resist, even if it meant sacrificing that evening glass of wine. And Ren was sure to be unmasked in his own quarters. Hux pressed his right hand against the entry pad, the implanted key inside his palm activating the door with his override. He stepped into the gloom, letting the door close behind him. Asleep, already? Lazy brat. Hux crossed the room, intending to shout Ren awake or pull him bodily out of bed. The room came into focus as Hux’s eyes adjusted to the dimmed lights. Ren was in bed, though he was not asleep.
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Kylo Ren
Comments: 19
Kudos: 129





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi this is porn. This is also a bit of a shorty, I have more half-written for it but this part was done and it's been a bit since I last posted. So here!

Hux’s wristcomm listed the current time as twenty-one hundred hours and one minute, the end of his usual shift and coincidentally sixty full seconds after what should have been the start of a scheduled meeting with Kylo Ren. So Ren was officially late to the meeting that the man had requested himself. Hux wasn’t surprised. The Knights of Ren had paid them a visit today, and Kylo Ren shirked his place in all of the workings of the _Finalizer_ whenever his shrouded friends came aboard. In actuality that suited Hux just fine. It was easier to run a Star Destroyer without Ren breathing down his neck. But there was nothing Hux hated more than having his personal time wasted.

The rest of the Knights of Ren had left the ship only minutes ago, he knew. Hux had personally approved their craft’s exit from the main hangar. Ren couldn’t be up to anything by himself that was important enough to justify his tardiness. If not for this meeting about the First Order’s progress with the search for Ren’s stars-be-damned map, Hux could already be out of his office and on his way to his quarters, where he could curl up with Millicent and the holonovel he’d been reading, and have a glass of wine. Hux tapped his datapad to check Ren’s location, and his nostrils flared when he saw that Ren (or at least his device) was still in his room. 

Heaving a sigh, Hux got up and left the sanctity of his office to fetch Ren. He probably couldn’t be blamed if he stalked straight past Ren’s room to his own and went to bed, he mused as he walked the corridors stiffly. His officers snapped to attention at his approach and Hux nodded to them as he moved along, not stopping to chat. Hux could still have his evening, if he just walked on by the approaching door. And if Ren complained later, Hux could chastise him for not showing in the first place. If he was lucky, he’d catch Ren with the helmet off. He wasn’t intimidated by that bucket like Ren thought he was. Whatever negativity Ren was picking up off him was in fact disappointment: Ren’s overly expressive face was so much better than the mask. Particularly when Hux scolded him. There was something delicious in the way his eyes got wide and his lips pouty. Yes, Hux could have a leisurely evening now and flay Ren alive later. Two of his favorite things.

He stopped outside Ren’s door. The idea of starting a fight was suddenly too appealing to resist, even if it meant sacrificing that evening glass of wine. And Ren was sure to be unmasked in his own quarters. Hux pressed his right hand against the entry pad, the implanted key inside his palm activating the door with his override. He stepped into the gloom, letting the door close behind him. Asleep, already? Lazy brat. Hux crossed the room, intending to shout Ren awake or pull him bodily out of bed.

The room came into focus as Hux’s eyes adjusted to the dimmed lights. Ren _was_ in bed, though he was not asleep. His skin gleamed with sweat and he was breathing hard, his muscled chest rising and falling roughly. He was nude, his cock jutting up from between his thighs, straining red and leaking. It could only be described as monstrous, and the sight of it struck Hux dumb for a moment. Then the entire picture before him coalesced into reality.

“Kriffing hells,” Hux spat, disgust curdling his stomach at the sight of the viscous fluid -- decidedly inhuman in hue -- leaking from Ren and all over the sheets between his legs. He’d evidently been used for release by more than one individual. He hadn’t gotten off in the process. Why not finish himself? A couple tugs would do it at this point, Hux thought.

“Hux,” Ren’s dark eyes rolled toward him, Ren understanding Hux’s presence here as something real now too. “Hux, please.”

And if the sight and sound of that didn’t go right to the pit of Hux’s belly, settling there hot and heavy. Ren’s face right now was better than any pout he’d given Hux before. His eyes were burning black, wild with desire, and his mouth was soft and trembling. How many years had Hux longed to hear Kylo Ren beg? _Not like this_ , his brain reminded him. His cock disagreed, stiffening in his trousers.

“You’re disgusting,” Hux told him, watching the way Ren’s cock throbbed at that, horrified at the mirrored reaction in himself. He pressed his palm into his own erection until it began to ache. Penance.

“You can do whatever you want,” Ren grunted at him, fisting his sheets until his knuckles went white, “only please, I need—”

And Hux should have made him beg harder, longer. As soon as Ren had looked up at him with shining, needy eyes he’d been doomed. Seeing the Knight so docile made his blood shimmer with an electric current. He should at least make Ren suffer for this, this ultimate seduction. Cursing himself for his lack of restraint, Hux stripped his uniform coat off with quick, practiced movements and took his place standing over Ren before he pulled his trousers down. Ren’s eyes were wide, hungry, and as black as wells. If he wasn’t careful he’d fall in.

“What do you need?” Hux asked, his own pulse quickening. The cool air prickled on his cock, standing up to match Ren’s. _What am I doing?_ He thought suddenly, _What the hell is this?_ His mind provided an immediate reply: _Why the fuck do you care? You want him_. He couldn’t argue with that.

“I need…” Ren started again, struggling with something, biting his lower lip, and then grimaced. He looked pained. “Just fuck me.”

Hux never had to be told that twice. He clambered on top of Ren’s body and lined himself up. Ren was already loose and wet -- _Don’t think too much about that_ . Hux suppressed a shiver and pushed in with one smooth thrust. It had been too long since he’d last done this with a partner. He’d almost forgotten how good it was. Hux pulled back and thrusted in again, and this time Ren moaned, and it felt like the room’s ambient temperature increased several degrees. _How can he still feel anything?_ Hux thought, but the moan hadn’t sounded faked, and so Hux set a steady pace chasing more of them. He shifted the angle, grabbing Ren’s thighs and pushing them up to fold him nearly in half so that he could thrust deeper, and Ren cried out. Every snap of Hux’s hips drew a sound from him now. He was leaking clear precome onto his stomach like a faucet. Hux shifted his weight to one arm to take Ren’s cock in hand, and Ren swatted him away with a panicked look.

“What--”

“Shut up,” Ren growled.

“You insolent little prick,” Hux snapped at him, and then Ren’s body clenched around him and Hux’s vision whited out. He’d intended to pull out, maybe to finish on Ren’s infuriating face, but it was too late now. Hux gasped raggedly as he spilled himself inside Ren, his fluids mixing with the other horrors there. “ _Fuck_.” He breathed when he was done, his own chest rising and falling just as roughly as Ren’s. Ren had screwed his eyes shut, and Hux saw that tears were leaking from them. His mouth had lolled open and there was a high flush on his face. He still hadn’t come, though Hux had the tell-tale headache that meant Ren had been reading his thoughts. “Spying again. Did you like how that felt for me?” Hux asked.

“Just go,” Ren said hoarsely, opening his eyes and blinking more tears out of them rapidly.

“What’s wrong with you?” _Besides everything_. Hux sighed irritably, his joints shaking with post-orgasm weakness. He withdrew from Ren with a gasp, already dreading looking down at himself. He’d be just as disgusting now, pearlescent blue and green fluids melded on his own skin. He didn’t look. Instead, he slid down Ren’s body until he was facing the head of his cock, gone so hard as to be purple. When Hux’s breath ghosted across it Ren spasmed and cried out, his hands finally leaving the sheets to hold Hux’s face steady, one fisted nearly painfully in his hair.

“Hux, don’t--”

“It’s only fair,” Hux told him, and when Ren released him without further objection, Hux licked his lips, and then took Ren into his mouth. He had to open his mouth wide for it to even fit. _Ridiculous_ , he thought, followed by, _perfect_. He bobbed down, taking in the head completely, and sucked. Ren erupted with a shout, his cock pulsing, and Hux pushed down further, swallowing around it as Ren coated his throat. When Ren’s aftershocks subsided, Hux pulled off, giving the oversensitized head one last lick. The taste of Ren was overwhelming, salty and musky and everything Hux wanted from an encounter like this, and despite himself Hux committed it to memory. It wasn’t as though he planned to make a hobby of visiting Ren’s quarters.

He glanced up at Ren’s face, finding it comically shocked. Hux stood, wincing at the mess running down his thighs from whoever came ( _ha_ ) before. The Knights, surely. He used the corner of Ren’s sheet to wipe himself clean enough to dress. He needed a shower as soon as possible.

“I didn’t think you would,” Ren said, his voice as shaky as his lips. His eyes were shiny again. Did he ever stop crying, truly? Or did the helmet just hide it?

“Would what?”

“Care if I finished.”

“I realize the difficulty for a brute like you,” Hux snipped as he pulled his trousers back up, “but you ought to select your lovers more carefully. Unless being left wanting was your goal. That’s it, isn’t it? You pathetic creature.”

“I can’t...I’m not supposed to.” Ren said, and his face was red. Hux never thought he’d see the man ashamed. It was a night of firsts. “It’s not pure.”

“Yes, because laying here with unspeakable slime pooling between your legs is so very pure.”

“The leader’s place is abstinence.”

“I don’t care. Goodnight, Ren.” Hux fastened the hidden clasps on his uniform jacket and made to leave. He was at the door before Ren spoke again. His voice was pained, accusatory.

“You don’t know what you’ve done.”

“I know I regret it already,” Hux said lightly without turning his head, the half-lie passing through his lips automatically. There was a quick intake of breath behind him: Kylo Ren, affronted. As though he had any right to be after Hux had found him wanting and left him sated. _Strange man_ . Without another word, Hux let himself out into the bright light of the _Finalizer’s_ corridors, feeling Ren’s burning eyes on him all the way back to his room and even into his refresher.

Once the last traces of physical evidence were gone -- the horrid stickiness left behind by Ren’s masked barbarians (unpleasant) and the scent of Ren’s sweat and musk on his skin (nauseatingly pleasant) -- the full, paralyzing weight of the situation hit him. Hux scrubbed himself raw with an exfoliating cloth and regulation soap, trying to rinse away the certainty in his bones that he’d just done something terribly foolish. Life-altering. It wasn’t a phrase that Hux ever thought he’d apply to a hookup. But Kylo Ren was not something to be trifled with. He had just fucked his co-commander, a volatile aspiring Sith. That was bad enough by itself. What the hell had Ren meant? _You don’t know what you’ve done_. The words wound through his brain on a twisted loop, determined not to be dismissed.

“Fuck,” Hux said to himself, the pit in his stomach growing. He leaned against the refresher wall and let the water beat down on him. He hadn’t yet rinsed Ren’s taste from his mouth. Instead of doing so, he slid down until he was seated. _I can’t...I’m not supposed to. You don’t know what you’ve done_ . Five years ago Armitage Hux would have told anyone who asked that the Force and all its various tricks were nothing but a myth. That was before he’d met Ren. Now, Hux would tell anyone who asked that the Force was undeniably real and also nothing but a load of fucking trouble.

“ _Fuck_. What has he done to me now?”

There was no answer besides the rhythmic drum of the water, starting to run cold.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Got the partially written bit fleshed out. Enjoy! Consent is a bit strange here because of Knightly Force Codes, detailed warning in end notes. Read safely!

For nearly a month things returned to normal, aside from the increase in the frequency of Ren’s tantrums and the myriad of looks Ren cast at Hux when they were alone. Sometimes open lust, sometimes wet anger complete with trembling lips, and sometimes one that was dark and indistinguishable. When he favored Hux with that look he often seemed on the brink of saying something, but he never did. Hux allowed him that silence, submitting expense reports for destroyed consoles and wall panels without comment.

Then Ren’s knights came aboard again. Hux knew they would; he’d seen the docking request come through for approval. He held out foolish hope that they would simply secret themselves away again in Ren’s quarters and life would proceed, and he could drink himself to sleep that night to avoid thinking about what was occuring in Ren’s room. That hope was dashed when, upon cutting across the bridge that went through the upper level of the hangar on his way to a briefing, the hair on the back of Hux’s neck stood up. He was being stared at.

A glance down into the hangar confirmed the source: four helmet visors pointed straight at him without a hint of discretion. So they knew. _Lovely_. He felt a sensation like bubbling in his ears from changing altitudes too quickly within a planet’s atmosphere, and turned away. The feeling of being watched came and went, unseen eyes lingering on him throughout his day. Usually he hardly laid eyes the lot of them once they were aboard, but this time Hux was haunted by black-robed figures in his peripheral vision for his entire shift well into the evening.

The two of them that were similarly built and wore hoods over their helmets entered the bridge together simply to stare at him for a full minute before leaving. The large one passed by the window of the conference room on deck 3 while he was speaking to Mitaka and made him lose his train of thought. The slight one with a bow caster on her back — Hux thought this one was female at least, from the cut of her armor — even came into the officers lounge when Hux stopped there during dinner hours to catch up with Phasma. Upon the little knight’s entry everything fell silent, and she simply stared at Hux for an agonizing stretch of time before turning and leaving. He wondered if they were angry. Did they mean to hurt him? To kill him?

Just as the end of Hux’s shift came and he left his office, he felt it again. A presence. He glanced behind himself and saw a knight walking twenty paces back, matching his gait. It was the big one, nearly a head taller than Ren. He sped up. The knight sped up. Hux turned a corner. The knight turned the same corner.

Giving up any pretense of normalcy, Hux took off in a dead sprint down the Finalizer’s halls. The knight behind him ran too, chasing him, their footfalls heavy and echoing. He hoped that knowing the ship might offer some level of advantage. What were the chances that Ren’s knights couldn’t track him the way Ren seemed to? That they couldn’t read his mind too? _Really fucked myself with this one_.

He drew his blaster as he turned the corner into the executive wing. The two twin knights stood at the end of the long hallway next to the stairwell. _Shit_. Hux automatically fell back into the alcove of a doorway as he fired off a plasma bolt at the one on the left. He heard the distinctive fizzling of the bolt freezing in place long enough for them to move out of the way before it resumed its path and struck durasteel.

 _Okay. Break their concentration_ . Hux slammed his fist into the entry pad of this door, shattering it, and pulled a chunk of it free, wires and all. It was heavy enough. He could throw it at the knights’ heads and then shoot low, and with any luck… A door in the hallway slid open and then clicked shut, and he heard the knight that had been pursuing him say something in their burbling language. _Now_.

Hux stepped out of the alcove, already bringing his newly-acquired projectile back to throw with his right hand, his blaster primed in his left, and nearly collided with Kylo Ren. His face was unmasked and vaguely worried, transforming into bewilderment as he brushed Hux’s thoughts. Hux winced at the sudden intrusion. Ren grabbed both of Hux’s wrists hard and twisted until Hux dropped his gun and the piece of the door, and then walked him back against the wall, pressing into his space until they were chest to chest.

“Don’t be afraid.”

“Call them off,” Hux demanded at once, his heart pounding.

“I can’t,” Ren said petulantly. “They want what they’re owed. You ruined it last time.”

Hux’s mind spun. Ren couldn’t mean—? “No.” He looked around wildly, seeing shrouded Knights approach from both ends of the hallway -- one, two...four, closing in -- and tried to twist out of Ren’s grasp to make a break for the flimsy safety of his own room, meaning to lock himself in. For whatever good that would do. None, if he was honest with himself. They'd wrench it open with their minds. Even if they weren't Force users, the big one could probably beat the door down. “No, absolutely not. Ren.” Hux searched Ren’s eyes for a hint of empathy or pity, anything he could use, and found it encased in resolve. “ _Ren—_!”

“The alternative is unpleasant,” said Ren matter-of-factly, his grip holding tight and sure on Hux’s forearms. “Trust me.”

Hux swallowed audibly. He could guess. _As if this isn’t unpleasant. Alright, Hux, you’ve done unpleasant before. Do it for your miserable life_. “Let me go,” He said, and when Ren didn’t, snapped, “I can’t reach your entry pad from here, can I?”

“Oh.” Ren sounded strangely relieved. His door across the hall slid open without either of them pressing a hand to the lock. Of course. Wizardry.

One of the knights that Hux had fired on said something in that strange tongue that made Hux feel like his ears were bubbling. He didn’t need to speak Sith to know it was a complaint.

“You scared him,” Ren bit back at the complainer. “He can’t hear you unless you connect. He won’t pick up on it.”

“Were they _talking_ to me?” Hux asked, memories of his strange day at the forefront of his mind.

“Don’t worry about it.” Ren ushered him into his room. The knights followed. Ren’s quarters were dimmed just as they had been the last time Hux was here. There was a bottle of First Order regulation personal lubricant laying on Ren’s gray sheets, it’s little black-on-gray label frighteningly mundane under the circumstances. The sight of that made this real.

“You could have warned me,” Hux said quietly. He hoped, dangerously. Ren looked a bit cowed. It was likely the only apology he’d get. Hux took a deep breath and released it slowly. “What’s the process here?”

“Undress. Or,” Ren glanced at the small knight as if she’d said something. “They can help you. If you like.”

“No,” said Hux. “That’s quite all right.” He didn’t want his uniform to end up tossed somewhere and unpresentable by the time he got out of this. Ren’s mouth twitched in amusement, and Hux set to work to avoid looking at him, undoing the hidden clasps in his jacket with rehearsed ease. The knights’ eyes bored into him as he shed the black fabric.

Ren was shedding his tunic too. “I thought it might be easier for you,” he confessed when Hux paused his own movements to watch. “Not to be the only one.” Ah. The knights weren’t undressing themselves, Hux noted. Ren shed his boots and leggings and then sat on the edge of his bed, watching Hux. Once his uniform and underthings were all folded neatly on Ren’s nightstand, Hux stood facing Ren, resolutely ignoring the audience behind him.

The large one said something and Ren’s eyes sparkled as he hummed an agreement.

“What?” Hux asked impatiently.

“He says you’re small.”

Hux felt his face heat in anger and shame. He’d always been skinny. Half of his width in uniform was structured tailoring. He was fit enough to meet military standards, but not… _Not like Ren_. Ren, nude in front of him for the second time, was sculpted like a statue. The man was reading his mind again. Ren’s face fell.

“No, don’t. They like it. I like it.” Ren bit his lower lip and ghosted a hand up along Hux’s side, not touching him yet. Waiting. Hux took the hand in his own and pressed it to his flesh.

Both Ren’s hands gripped his waist then, and drew him forward. Despite himself Hux was getting hard. It was the sight of Ren paired with the warm and rough reality of his palms on his skin. Ren placed a sloppy kiss on his breastbone, and then his hands slid down to Hux’s hips and he hauled him up onto the bed at the same moment he moved himself back onto it.

There was a bit of fumbling, and Ren clicked his tongue at him once which made Hux glare, and then they were situated. Ren lay on his back and Hux on Ren’s chest, his face tucked into Ren’s throat and Ren’s arms around his back. One of Hux’s legs was drawn up and bent out to the side — Ren’s idea — the angle opening him up. The other he left stretched out long against the outside of Ren’s, the muscle of Ren’s thigh firm against his. Hux could feel Ren’s burgeoning erection next to his own, their cocks trapped between their bodies. For an instant it was possible to forget the circumstances of this. Then a gloved hand ran its fingertips up his calf.

“I told you you have to connect with him.” Ren’s voice rumbling in his chest under Hux’s ear.

There was a sharp pain, in his temple instead of the base of his skull like when Ren invaded him, and then a new presence was there. It was the woman. She showed him an idea in unrelated pictures — a tattooed zabrak hand plucking a white flower from a garden and then pressing its fingers into the center of the petals.

 _Is_ _that your hand?_ No answer. A bit poetic, for his tastes, but he got the point. _Get on with it_.

She was happy, Hux thought, before her mind pulled too far away from him for him to see it. The bottle zipped up from the sheets and smacked into her gloved hand, and her weight settled over his right leg and Ren’s, resting there. He heard her open the bottle and then jumped at the sensation of cool lube being squirted directly onto him, down the cleft of his ass. Her leather-clad fingertips traced him, spreading the oil, and then circled his rim. He breathed in — Ren’s scent — and then out, relaxing himself.

One gloved finger slid inside him to the knuckle and then withdrew. She fucked that finger in until he wanted more, and the instant he did she added a second. She scissored them, stretching him, and he moaned low in his throat, nuzzling his red face into Ren’s chest when he felt that bubbling sensation in his eardrums again. Ren’s arms tightened around him. There was a pinch inside his spinal column then, at the vertebrae meeting the base of his skull. _Voyeur_. Ren squeezed his hands on Hux’s sides, not denying it.

The knight fingering him open added a third, twisting them around in a way that made him shiver. "Do that again. He likes it," Ren told her.

"You bastard," Hux growled at him, his voice hitching as she repeated the movement. The rough leather of her gloves slid over his prostate. It drew another noise from him and jerked his hips forward, thrusting once weakly against Ren, needing the friction.

One of the male knights laid a hand on his shoulder then and said something. They had crowded around the bed, he realized. Ren’s grip moved down to his hips and held him there, fast against Ren’s body. Firm enough for Ren’s handprints to bruise, if they stayed like this very long. He tried to move against Ren again as he felt the knight behind him squeeze her fourth finger into him and couldn’t. He could only accept what was offered now.

Hux craned his neck to look up at the two knights standing on Ren’s left and realized they had made one important alteration to their state of dress — they’d taken their cocks out. One blue and one green, as he’d known but almost forgotten. The hooded knights had green skin. Striped. Twi’lek? The large one seemed to be chiss, which made sense. Their indigo member looked to be slightly thicker than Rens, if the same length. Leave it to Ren to be hung like a chiss.

 _You have a nice cock too_ , Ren thought at him.

 _He isn’t going first, is he?_ Hux asked, letting the compliment pass him by.

The chiss said something too short to be anything but no.

 _I’m ready_ , Hux thought at none of them in particular. The fingers up his ass withdrew and the little knight left her post, crawling up by his head and resting on her knees there. The bed dipped with the weight of another of them. The other hooded one, since the two he could see hadn’t moved. Hux heard this one lubing up, and then the blunt head of a cock was pushing into him.

He sighed at the drag of it as the knight bottomed out. The little one was tugging at his hand, trying to get his attention.

“Ren,” He said aloud. Ren lifted his arm away to the side long enough for Hux to free his own arm, and the little knight pulled his hand beneath her armor’s long tunic. He’d thought she was fully clothed looking at her, but it was only long boot covers. Beneath the fabric of her shirt he felt that the insides of her thighs were bare. He ran the outside of his hand up her hot flesh and found her sex. She was wet already. He shifted slightly so that his shoulder wouldn’t ache, pausing with a whine as the knight behind him started to fuck him in earnest. He still wasn’t getting the friction he wanted on his cock, but the knight was driving him down against Ren in a way that was pleasant.

Back to the task at hand, literally. He turned his palm up and slid his fingers against the woman’s slick folds. Humanoid enough, which at least made this easy. He knew his way around female anatomy, though it wasn’t his preference. He slipped two of his fingers in, his thumb searching for something akin to a clit. If she had one. Inside her, his fingertips brushed against a hard and fleshy obtrusion like padded bone, and her legs shook. She supported herself on one of her arms too, leaning forward and thrusting her hips against his palm. Her tunic came up, exposing an inch of tattooed thigh. She was a zabrak, then. Hux stretched his thumb out, aiming higher, and found more obtrusions outside. A small circle of them right at the front of her sex, slick with her fluids. He ran the pad of his thumb over them and then pressed in the center, which was softer. A harsh burst of static came from her vocoder and she clenched around his fingers.

 _Good?_ She showed him a coursing river. Alright, probably good. He kept at it, taking the hissing breath coming from her helmet as approval.

The knight plowing into him hit his prostate then and his vision went white. He turned his face back in toward Ren’s neck and closed his eyes. The next thrust hit the same spot and he thought he might come. He moaned, and it seemed too loud and too deep, and then he realized Ren had moaned too.

The big knight’s hand came down on his back and he said something.

“Ah, um,” Ren’s voice sounded wrecked. “He’s not used to — kriff — he’ll need help.”

Hux’s lower back suddenly felt cold and tingly where the knight’s glove rested, and then the feeling settled in his belly and moved down to the base of his cock. It felt like a steel ring rested there even though he knew there was none. He could still feel Ren’s skin against his, and the dual sensation was dizzying. The knight inside him hissed and finished, cock pulsing. As one, all of them reacted. The zabrak clenched around his fingers again and then delicately pulled off, evidently sated. The chiss’s hand on his back shook. Ren moaned and pressed his face down, his mouth against Hux’s forehead.

There was a spurt of additional wetness over Hux’s ass and then the knights erupted into chatter all at once. Hux’s head felt funny. Pressurized as if he had a sinus infection, but without the snot. They were jeering at the one who’d just ejaculated on him, he realized. That one said something back, managing a whine even through his helmet, and then moved away to sit on the floor by the wall. His twin pulled out of Hux with a gasp and zipped himself back up and then joined him on the floor, and then the zabrak woman left the bed to sit on his other side. They were still talking quietly, and it was more bearable with a little distance. Hux was fairly sure the woman laughed at the dejected twin. All three were still watching.

It was the big one’s turn, Hux knew. The chiss took his place behind him, lining up that deep blue cock. There was enough green ooze on Hux and in him that more lube wasn’t necessary. Hux grunted as he was breached, his left hand finding the meat of Ren’s shoulder and digging in. The giant was gentle: he thrusted into Hux with a tentative rocking motion, pausing whenever the muscles in Hux’s back tensed.

 _I’m not going to break_ , Hux thought loudly.

“Shit,” Ren said aloud. Hux had forgotten speaking aloud was an option.

The knight behind him snapped his hips forward, driving into him roughly to the hilt. Hux cried out, but the sound was nearly drowned in Ren’s own shout. Ren’s hands were trembling, grabbing at Hux’s back as though Hux were fucking him instead of being fucked. The chiss’s hands replaced Ren’s on his hips, holding him steady, and he pulled out until the head of his cock stretched Hux’s rim again, and then slammed in hard enough to drive both Hux and Ren down into the mattress. Hux felt dizzyingly as though he were cleaved in two.

Ren said something, this time in that strange bubbling language. His chest was heaving.

“Did you tell him to back off?” Hux asked, suspicious. He twisted his neck to glance behind him at the knight’s helmeted face. “Don’t you dare.”

Hux felt another connection, this one like a plasma bolt to the center of his forehead. An image: a malnourished canid creature, the kind called a fox on Arkanis, this one on some distant volcanic planet, struggling to climb a ridge as the black sand came loose under paw. A rockslide, obsidian crashing around it. The skinny fox would be lucky to survive this roiling solid void. Was that supposed to be him?

 _As if. Show me what you can do_.

There was a flash of warmth in his head like laying beneath a sun-lamp, and then the knight rose to the challenge.

“Fuck,” Ren shouted at the next thrust. It had been on the edge of pain. The chiss took his hands off Hux’s hips and put them on the bed bracketing Ren’s shoulders.

“Is the — mm — the weight too much?” Hux asked him. His voice was embarrassingly breathy. Oh well. It was understandable, right?

“No,” Ren said. “Hux, you don’t have to—”

Hux shifted to look behind him again, carefully pulling his other leg up to get his knees beneath him. “What do you think you’re doing?” He snapped at the knight, who had paused again while Ren spoke. The chiss obeyed, setting a pace that made Ren lose whatever words might have come next in moans.

Not that Hux was immune. He stifled the noises he was making on Ren’s chest, tasting the salt of his sweat there, and when the building electricity in his groan became too much he bit Ren’s collar bone. The bed was creaking under the chiss’s enthusiasm. Hux wondered idly if it would break. The knight’s armor ground rough against his flank at the bottom of every thrust. His hips ached. They might be creaking like the bedframe, Hux thought. Ren’s cock throbbed against his stomach.

He heard this knight make a sound like the last one had, whatever it truly was distorted into a flat harsh hiss by his vocoder, and his huge cock pulsed as he buried himself deep.

Ren nearly sobbed, rutting up against Hux and flooding the scant space between them with his spend. “Shit,” he said, “shit.” Hux’s cock twitched in jealousy, covered now in a slimy layer of Ren and still held tight by the invisible ring at its base. It was beginning to really ache.

Ren said, “I told you to go easy, you sloppy bitch,” and Hux’s brain swam. The words in his ears had been gibberish. He realized that the chiss was still connected to him. He’d heard their meaning in his mind.

The chiss pulled out from both Hux’s brain and asshole with a burbled apology. Hux felt hot fluid run out of him and onto the sheets, melding with the tacky cooling substance from the last knight. He looked like Ren had, he knew. Fucked loose and leaking green and blue. _Not exactly like Ren did. You’ve got white on your stomach_. Hux thought, and his dick twinged again pitifully, leaking clear precome.

The other knights were coming back to the bed, crowding them. He felt something new press against his opening and tensed. Another round? No, the stab at his temple again and then an image, this one in real time. It was him. His stomach lurched at just how used he looked. There was a transparent rippled plug pressed up against him, held by the zabrak woman. The image felt like a question mark.

_Why the hell not?_

She made the laughing sound again and pushed it in. The edges of his mind blurred as the plug drove straight into his prostate, hard. He could’ve come from that if not for the band constricting him. His denied orgasm turned sharp and painful. Gloved hands raked over his flesh, digging in. Each of the Knights grabbed a joint -- his shoulder, his hip. The woman tapped the base of the plug once and then slid her hand down and rested it around the back of his right knee. Together, they growled something almost melodic in their guttural way.

He must have blacked out, Hux thought, as when he opened his eyes he and Ren were alone. He hadn’t heard the Knights leave. He felt plastered against Ren with sweat. He took a shaky breath against Ren’s neck, where he’d sought refuge before. The smell of Ren’s skin was soothing, the motion of his breath like the sea. He felt rather like someone had taken a hammer to his groin. A deep ache had settled there. He was still hard.

“Hux,” Ren’s voice. Hux couldn’t find it in himself to respond yet, dozing off with the rhythm of Ren’s breathing again. Not content to let it lie, Ren carefully rolled Hux off his chest and over onto his back on the cool sheets. “Hux? You alive in there?” His voice was tinged with alarm now, and that was too much. Hux laughed. It was an outright giggle, and once he’d started he couldn’t stop. He laughed until he was breathless, and felt Ren’s touch along the edge of his mind. Checking his sanity? _Let me know what you find_.

“You did well,” Ren said, and the sheer absurdity of that, as if it were a performance review, made another round of shrill laughter bubble up in his chest. Hux swallowed it with effort.

“As interesting as that was, it is never happening again,” he said thickly.

“That’s not the deal,” Ren said gently.

That woke him up, “What?”

“You made me unfit. You have to take my place.” Then, more hopefully, “You enjoyed it.”

 _I enjoyed you_. “That last bit wasn’t my favorite.”

“They were thanking you.”

“No. The...er. Not being able to, when she...” _Fucking hell_. Hux shifted and realized the plug had been left in its place.

“Oh. Yeah. We need to get that out of you. Uh...here.” Ren slid off the bed and pulled Hux’s hips to the edge, spreading his legs. Ren considered for a moment, and then pulled Hux off the edge just barely, letting gravity help. Ren tugged at the flared base of the plug and Hux grunted when the first ridge stretched him anew, tensing up. Ren paused, waiting. Hux didn’t think he’d ever left a sexual encounter feeling this overstimulated.

“It gets better. You get used to it,” Ren said.

Hux bit back the urge to scream. He couldn’t do this again. In the back of his mind he knew that Ren had been through it many more times, but if this was his weakness, so be it. He’d climbed too far to let himself be regressed like this again. It was reminiscent of his petty officer days. Worse than that, really. When it was a human man he could reliably zone out. He’d never be able to with five Force users in the room, their minds arcing off his as if he were a tower on an electricity farm. He felt scorched. His mouth tasted like ozone. He really would go mad.

He tried to articulate it. “It’s too much,” he settled on.

“They won’t touch you again if I claim you too.” Ren murmured, offering it up almost apologetically. A ghastly solution. He’d use the same tone of voice if he were telling Hux a broken limb that was troubling him could be amputated.

“What?” Hux asked hazily. “What, you need to suck me off? Get to it, then.”

“No,” Ren said. “You were impure to begin with. That’s not enough.”

“I can’t drop what I’m doing to get fucked silly by a pack of aliens whenever the urge strikes them. I have a fleet to command.” said Hux.

“We’ll be bonded,” Ren warned him. Hux’s stomach lurched. Tied to Ren via some mystical nonsense. Maybe the aliens were better. “Okay, you need to relax. I’m going to pull this out,” Ren told him, and Hux did, shuddering as the ridged toy stretched his rim and finally slipped free with a disgusting rush of trapped fluids. “Good,” Ren murmured. Hux’s cock was so hard it hurt. He was exhausted, dripping, messy, and...and _gross_. The aliens were not better.

“You weren’t left like that,” he said irritably, crawling onto the bed again fully with shaking muscles. _Plugged up_.

“She liked you,” Ren said simply.

Hux made a sour face. “Do whatever you need to.”

“Did you hate it that much?” Ren’s mouth was quirked up, amused.

“You might be content to be a plaything, Ren,” Hux groaned. “I am not.”

“You make a good one.”

“Hm, no. I think it suits you better. Do I have to stay like this? Under pain of death.” He asked, meaning his erection and only partially teasing. The slide of the toy leaving him had renewed the throbbing ache in his groin.

“No. Not if it's me, since you claimed me,” said Ren, crawling up into bed behind him finally and reaching for his swollen cock. The invisible ring around the base disappeared at his touch, and in a few sloppy strokes Hux added to the smeared white painted on his stomach, breathing hard. “You’ve got it easy, you know.” Ren said, dragging his palm up through the mess to pull Hux against him, making Hux gag. “I ought to have left you hard. You’d be nicer to me, probably.”

“I’d murder you.”

He felt more than heard Ren’s chuckle against his back. Ren kissed his shoulder wetly. They lay like that, minutes spooling out uncounted and Ren rubbing slow circles on Hux’s hip with his other hand, his breath hot on Hux’s shoulder. It might be sweet if Hux didn’t feel so thoroughly disgusting.

“You didn’t mean to do it,” Ren said after a while. “To claim me.”

Hux considered that before answering. “Not so concretely.” Ren sat up, dark eyes peering down at him with interest. “I didn’t have a contract signed in blood in mind,” Hux smirked at him.

“It’s not a contract. It's a covenant.”

“If I try to kill you after we’re ‘bonded’ will my skull explode?”

“Yes,” Ren lied, quirking one brow up before burying his face in the side of Hux’s neck and biting there playfully. “But it goes both ways.” He licked the red mark he’d just made on Hux’s throat.

“If only. You could use a muzzle,” Hux said, and then when Ren didn’t stop. “Alright you’ve sold me. How do we solve this? Since I’m so unworthy,” Hux was privately sure he didn’t really want to know.

“It’s a ritual,” Kylo murmured against his skin. “To make you mine.”

“Will it piss them off?”

“They’ll get over it. It’s my right to take a mate if I choose, now that you've dragged me down to your level.”

“Can you do it before they come back?”

“Yes. Give me a week.”

Hux let himself feel what little relief that brought. “Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Stay.”

“Millicent will miss me.”

“What?” Hux conjured up an image of her, and Ren chuckled again, but didn’t release his hold. “You have a tooka on the ship. Can I meet it?”

“No.”

“Cold.”

“Goodnight, Ren.” Ren’s hands loosened at last, as if from the rote memory of last time, and Hux sat up, feeling so completely fucked-out he was suddenly unsure if he could dress himself. To his relief, he managed it. “One week,” he said on his way out the door.

Ren nodded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It can't end here so I promise another chapter unless God nerfs me. I spent entirely too much time musing over the hypothetical Knights of Ren purity rules since they only exist to facilitate this smut.
> 
> TW: Hux agrees to an orgy with the knights under the vague threat of consequences if he doesn't. He isn't hurt in the process of sex and isn't traumatized afterward, but expresses the desire for it not to happen again a la 'I tried it and it wasn't for me'.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last part written! Added violence warning for two ritual sacrifices, details of murder method in bottom notes. It's quick, there is no torture.

“Are you listening to me?”

“Mm-hm.”

“You’re not. I know you, you’ll pick someone who’s lagging in their work. You can’t do that. It has to be personal. Okay?”

Hux finally looked up from his datapad. Ren had spent an inordinate time in his office this last week, most of it surprisingly quiet and unobtrusive. He’d brought in a stack of disintegrating paper books and strewn them over the couch at the back of the room, but other than that his presence had been almost pleasant. Hux should’ve expected that to end right about now. This ritual Ren had promised was tomorrow night. It was what Ren had been reading up on, if Hux had to bet on what these dusty tomes contained.

“What if the professional is personal, to me?” Hux asked coyly.

Ren scowled at him. “There’s got to be someone on board who has it out for you because of that stick up your ass instead of the bands on your wrists.” Ren licked his finger to turn the page, going back to his book.

Hux didn’t return to his own reading, instead rifling through a mental catalogue of his officers and the twenty or so visiting from other ships. “Why has it got to be personal?” He asked.

Ren made a noncommittal sound.

“Am I killing them?” Hux clarified.

“I am,” said Ren.

“Okay. There’s one.”

“Only one?” Ren looked up again, his expression doubtful and annoyed.

“One that I’m sure of. You _do_ want me to be sure?”

“Yes.” Ren grouched. “Okay. You’ve got to get them to your quarters at 22:00 hours, willingly. Will that be a problem?”

“No,” Hux said, considering it. “He’ll respond to a summons. We’re doing this in my quarters?”

“Are you going to question every part?”

Hux sniffed. “Perhaps.” Ren muttered something that Hux couldn’t hear from his desk, and Hux couldn’t help the smirk that graced his features. “It’s nearly 23:00 hours,” he murmured after Ren had flipped two more pages. Hux said, “You should go to bed.” Ren acted as though he hadn’t heard. _You know I hate that, you insufferable spoiled brat_.

Ren looked up at last, eyebrows drawn low. “I heard that.”

 _You were meant to_.

Ren scoffed and went back to his reading.

Hux got up, settling his coat on his shoulders, clearing his desk and stuffing his datapad in his coat pocket. “Well, _I’m_ going to bed.” What Ren did was of no consequence. Why hadn’t he just said that to begin with? Ren didn’t acknowledge him this time either, but Hux stopped a moment just to look at him. His eyebrows were still scrunched as he read, either from eye strain or just his foul temperament. Both were equally likely. His eyes were rapt on the page, one fingertip trailing along as he read, and his lips moved occasionally when he sounded out a word. The text on the page was characters unfamiliar to Hux, probably the bubbling language the knights had spoken.

Hux was crossing the room before he’d consciously decided to. Ren looked up at him, blinking rapidly in confusion, when Hux gently cupped his face in one gloved hand. Hux’s stomach lurched and he grasped for an explanation. One that was rational. “You should go to bed,” he said again firmly.

“This is complicated,” Ren said, “and we’ve got to get it right.” But his eyes were bloodshot. He’d been reading now nearly uninterrupted since dinner.

“Do it tomorrow.”

“I’m fine.”

“It’s giving me a headache looking at you.”

“Thought you were leaving.”

“Ren.”

“You can’t order me around, _General_.”

Hux rubbed his thumb gently across Ren’s cheek, and Ren bit his lower lip. “No,” said Hux. “I imagine not. You’re a constant source of displeasure. You know that, don’t you?” His voice held none of the ire it should have.

“Constant?” Ren challenged him, those dark eyes suddenly bright.

“Oh yes,” Hux said, raising his eyebrows and nodding once in sharp consternation. Then he leaned down slow and pressed his lips just beneath the swell of Ren’s mouth, along the left corner. Ren’s breath puffed warm against Hux’s cheek as he exhaled in surprise. Hux kissed him there, gently, so softly it might have been nothing at all, and then pulled away. The moment hung heavy between them, and then Hux cleared his throat. “I don't give a womp rat's ass if you stay here all night. If you’re late to the bridge in the morning you’ll be scrubbing the communal refreshers.”

Ren licked his lips and then they ghosted up in a smile. “I won’t be up all night,” he said. “Tonight.”

Hux turned away and made for the door, giving Ren one last look after it slid open with a hiss. Ren was leaning toward him, far enough forward he looked about to fall off the couch, the ancient tome held in just one hand, about to drop to the floor. His eyes were wide and his lips were parted. It made him look younger, Hux thought. He left without another word. As he walked toward his quarters he thought, _What was that?_ The answer came immediately. _Flirting. I’m flirting with Kylo Ren_ . It was all a bit backwards. Was he consoling himself? Hux had never wanted anything long-term before, and while Ren hadn’t been generous with the details, Hux imagined that whatever mystical arrangement he was about to enter into would be more or less permanent. The thought had lost its edge over the past week. Hux was not blind to the potential advantage in _Ren_ being tethered to _him_. Whatever the strength of that, it had appeal. The ol’ give and take. Hux specialized in ‘take’. Not so much in ‘give’. But he could make it work.

“Millicent,” he cooed upon entering his room. She chirped, leaving her usual spot by the window where she watched stars and TIE fighters blink by, and padded over on her scaly feet to wind around his ankles. “There will be quite a lot of people here tomorrow night. Four! Then less,” Hux told her, beginning to undress. He tossed his cap on his side table and Millicent hopped up onto his bed, knowing where his nighttime routine ended. “I wonder who it is that Ren’s selected. If it's one of my better officers I may struggle a bit with it, to be honest.”

Millicent yawned.

“You’re right,” Hux said, stripping the last of his clothes off.

Hux didn’t know whether Ren had been late to the bridge this morning or not — as soon as he himself had arrived, he’d been pulled aside by Mitaka to personally approve an unusual checkpoint request near the Outer Rim, and he’d had to listen to the pilot’s sob story about her childhood and her unregistered shipping craft. He had a funny feeling about it, but let the craft through so that he didn’t have to sit through yet another tale about the galaxy’s worst drunken fathers, making pirates and smugglers using only their fists and what little creativity they were graced with -- usually just enough to be truly cruel. Generals, too. Sometimes fathers like that made Generals. That incident had set the tone for the day.

By the time he retired to his room at night to pick at his latest designs in peace, Hux was dreading the theatre production that was soon to begin right here in his chambers. It wasn’t Ren that worried him, something that was new enough it wasn’t comfortable -- he was still breaking in the feeling of ease around the concept of Ren. But it _was_ there. Sometime between sticking his cock in the man and agreeing to actually partake in a bit of Force magic, Hux had let his guard down. Maybe this was the right choice for more than one reason. He could use some added security. But tonight, that meant having to see Admiral Brooks. Under the best of circumstances Brooks was an unwelcome sight, and after the morning’s debacle with the weepy pilot and Hux’s resulting three-cigarra smoke break, he was not in the mood for visitors from his past. Hux consoled himself with the fact that Brooks’s respiration within this room would be brief. He wanted to crawl into bed. _One Knight of Ren will exhaust you less than five. Do it for Future Hux_.

As if summoned, Ren entered the room with all his usual bluster, his steps long and heavy in his boots and his robes swirling around him. He was unmasked. Hux wondered if Ren had used some trick to keep from being seen on the way here, convincing the _Finalizer’s_ officers they suddenly wanted to walk another hall as he approached. Ren stopped short, watching the floating diagram Hux had been adjusting hover in the air above Hux’s desk.

“Snoke approved these plans today,” Ren said, recognizing them. So Snoke had shown him. Hux had wondered whether Ren would be clued in. Hux tapped at his datapad and the image spun slowly.

“Starkiller.”

“Looks like another Death Star.”

“Yes, well. Not my most creative exterior. There’s only so much to work with using a planet as the host. The machinations are more advanced than anything the Empire could dream of, I assure you.”

“You’re using Ilum.”

“The kyber core is necessary.”

“It’s a waste.”

“And your disgrace of a weapon isn’t?”

“You could make one. I could show you how. Then you’d understand.”

“A laser sword cuts down one enemy. Starkiller will end trillions in a single moment. Entire systems.” Hux’s eyes narrowed. “Did you tell the Supreme Leader it was a ‘waste’?”

“I wanted to.”

Hux scowled at him. “If I could throw you out tonight I would.”

“I’ll sleep on the couch.” Ren winked at him. “Where’s your tooka?” He was looking around the room for her.

“I shut her in the refresher,” Hux said. “Thought it was best. Five minutes to showtime. Clue me in on our first steps?”

Ren drew an ornate dagger out of his robes and held it out by the blade for Hux to take. It was wickedly curved and black as pitch, and unpleasantly waxy like the shell of an insect. There were symbols etched into the blade. Hux let it rest on his fingertips to test the balance, and then twisted his wrist to slice it through the air. It made a ringing sound, cutting through the oxygen in the room. Sharp enough to unravel the layers of his skin with the slightest touch.

“You just had this lying around?”

“We obtained it on Felucia. There was a lost temple--”

“Ah. I remember.” One of Ren’s expeditions to root out Sith artifacts. “Horrid planet. Can I use this however I like, or are there rules?”

“None for the knife. Stick it wherever you want.”

Hux’s door chimed, an entry request. Hux waved it open, holding the dagger behind his back. Admiral Brooks entered ahead of one stormtrooper. They both stood at attention, the Admiral seeming rather put out at the late summons.

Brooks looked between the two of them, and then settled on Hux. Hux’s office was where his summons had come from. “How may I be of assistance, sir?” Brooks asked, his Imperial manners nearly masking the distaste in his voice at addressing Hux respectfully. He still couldn’t bring himself to say _General_ , even after all these years, Hux noted.

Hux glanced to the side, catching Ren’s eyes. Ren jerked his head toward the trooper.

“SR-5505,” Hux read off of her shoulder. She stepped forward to stand just before him. “Remove your helmet, please.” Hux requested.

She obeyed, her movements slightly awkward. Understandable. It was not a common order for troopers; normally it would get them reprimanded. Perhaps leaving it on would have been more merciful, but this wasn’t about mercy. Hux studied her face, curious. She was young. There had been nothing questionable in her record — her performance reviews were middling, and she’d received one demerit for gossiping in the mess hall six months ago.

“Why?” Hux asked.

SR-5505’s eyes widened. “I’m sorry sir, I don’t—”

Ren interrupted. “You can’t know.”

“That’s part of it?” Hux asked.

“That’s part of it.”

“Thank you for your service.” Hux told the trooper, and then brought the knife out from behind his back and drove it into her left eye. It sank in easily, splitting her eyelids down the middle and piercing her brain. In the next instant, something strange happened. The runes on the dagger flashed red, and the trooper’s body was vaporized into fine ash that settled on Hux’s floor.

Brooks shouted, his wide face going white and bloodless. He made a break for Hux’s door, but it didn’t open. Hux had scheduled his personal override to be in place tonight of course. Brooks pounded on the durasteel door, breathing hard.

Hux held the knife out to the side. Ren took it carefully. Ren stepped forward, and his heavy tread made Brooks turn around.

“Lord Ren,” said Brooks. “Whatever lies he’s been spinning about me, you can tell the Supreme Leader they are false...I swear—”

“Quiet,” Ren growled at Brooks. Hux felt as though the room increased in temperature, heat moving along his skin and pooling below his navel. He’d thought he would enjoy this less for the inability to end the man himself. It was nice to be wrong, this once.

Ren swung the dagger out and Brooks cowered against the door, squealing when the blade left a dripping slash across his chest. It was shallow. Nonlethal. Ren meant to draw this out. Brooks scrambled to the side, trying to stay out of Ren’s reach, and then looked at Hux. Ren must have known Brooks’s thoughts before they showed on his face, because Brooks’s body was thrown to the floor by an invisible force before the murderous intent reached his eyes.

Hux moved forward and knelt next to Brooks’s head, watching thwarted rage turn the man’s face red. Normally he’d want to get a last word in, but he didn’t want to risk giving Ren more information than he should about this particular grudge.

Ren put a knee on Brooks’s back and a gloved hand on his head, and then drew the dagger quickly across the back of his neck, opening the flesh there. Then he jammed it straight down into the cut, severing Brooks’s spinal cord within his body. The tip of the dagger emerged from his throat and left a small dent in the floor, and Hux tried to give Ren an annoyed look. He was afraid it came out more fond, by the look Ren returned him. Brooks turned to ash just like the trooper, even the droplets of his blood on the floor burning up into smoke. Ren stood.

The two small piles of ash swirled together on the floor as if swept up into a neat circle. Ren pulled two clear tubes from his breast pocket, and added a sprinkling of more ash to the pile on the floor from one, and then a drizzle of herb-scented oil from the other. “Jedi,” Ren said at Hux’s questioning gaze. “From my collection. It will help you in this. Undress.” He let his cloak drop and began pulling his tunic from his shoulders. Hux obeyed. Before he discarded his robes completely, Ren handed Hux a page torn from one of his books. A diagram of a tattooed body.

When they were both nude, Ren sat on the floor next to the ash and began mixing it into a gray paste with the oil. Hux sat next to him, the metal of the floor cold on his skin. He looked at the page in his hand, understanding what was to come. Ren painted a series of symbols in a large and intricate hexagonal shape on the floor, and then beckoned Hux into it.

“Lay back and let me see that,” Ren instructed, and Hux did, holding the page out at his side. Then he felt the strange slime of Ren smearing the ash-paste on his chest. He was painting the dizzying pattern from the book on Hux’s skin. It was hard not to fall asleep while Ren worked, his touch firm but gentle. The painted-on ash and oil started cold, but then the lines of paste began to warm and tingle strangely. The sensation became painful and Hux hissed at it, gritting his teeth and clenching his fists to keep from disrupting the pattern by pawing at it. The brutal scrawl Ren was writing covered his chest and stomach. Ren branched out over his shoulders and down his arms, then his thighs. The designs ended with two bands around his forearms and calves.

“This burns,” Hux grunted.

“It’s almost done. Turn over.” The process repeated on his back. “Okay,” Ren said. "Now me."

They traded places, Hux dipping his fingers into the paste on the floor and painstakingly dabbing the pattern depicted on the page onto Ren’s body, intent on copying it exactly. The burning on his own form subsided just as Ren said it would, and there was a sort of humming in his bones. A low drone almost past the point of hearing.

“Back,” he murmured, fascinated with the way that the design accented Ren’s muscles. “Okay. Done. What—” Hux froze, and held both his arms up to look at them. He’d caught sight of one forearm, where the pattern was no longer gray. It was scarred. He touched it cautiously, finding the purple tissue slightly raised and the nerves there strangely muted.

Ren sat up, and Hux watched as the paste on his chest sank in, smoking slightly under the electric lights of the room and scarring pink where it had been. “Huh.” Hux said, then chastised himself, _Eloquent_.

Ren snorted at him, overhearing that. “I like you quiet. It’s nice to change things up.”

“Can you tell me now, why I brained that trooper?” Hux asked, twisting to try and see the new scars on his backside.

“She was with the Resistance. She killed one of our own and took their place to gain intel.”

“You said it had to be personal.”

“It was. I killed her parents. What did you do to Brooks?”

“Killed mine,” Hux said breezily. The humming was beginning to bother him. His nerves felt sensitized. His vision swam with a strange current, like sparkling dust swept up in a vast river just beneath the surface of the room. It was brighter around his own body, and brightest around Ren’s. “What is this stuff?”

“You can see it?” Ren looked startled. “I wasn’t sure if you would. It’s the Force.”

“Kriff. Do you see this all the time? I’d get seasick.”

“No. I can see it now, that’s all. It’s the, uh, ashes.”

“Would you care to tell me exactly what the aim of this ritual is? I assume it’s too late to back out now either way, so you’ve nothing to worry about.” The swirling dust at the edges of his vision made Hux feel as though the last remnants of his sanity were being rearranged. It was one thing to see Ren levitate things. It was another to see the tiny crystalline stars settling on his flesh for himself, to try and reconcile them with Ren’s preaching about the Force. And settle they did, as if magnetized. It looked as though he and Ren were encrusted with tiny jewels. Ren glowed like Canto Bight finery under casino lights. Hux’s shine was subtle, but unmistakably there. _The Force flows through all living things_. Ren’s voice in his head.

 _Explain the deal. Please_.

“Relationships aren’t condoned in Jedi teaching. The Sith weren’t fond of them either. I don’t keep Jedi or Sith practices now, but the knights do pull from Sith scripture. The Sith believed that connections left one vulnerable to betrayal. This ritual was meant to...discourage that.”

“Betrayal. I can’t help myself sometimes,” Hux smirked. He’d have to nix all those lovingly thought-out assassination plans.

“Vicious,” Ren said, pulling Hux in. Ren’s hands were warm on him and, as before, Hux felt his body start to respond.

He straddled Ren’s lap and nipped under his jaw, working back to his ear before asking, “How exactly does this _discourage_ me?”

“There’s less incentive to off your partner when it wouldn’t get rid of them. We won’t be able to escape each other even in death.”

Hux pulled back to fix Ren with an unimpressed look. “Don’t tell me you lot believe in an afterlife.”

“Not for Force nulls, usually. Force users remain after death, visible to each other and not to nulls. Excepting those, living and dead, who’ve been through something like this. You’re welcome.”

Hux groaned. “That’s a bit more permanent than I suspected, Ren.” Ren laughed, grinning wide and showing his crooked teeth. His hands squeezed at Hux’s waist. He leaned in to bite at Hux’s collar bone and Hux pulled him off by his hair. “No, _no_ . Ren, look at me. Are you saying — _eternity?!_ ”

“You’ll thank me someday.”

“Hells.” Hux let Ren go, cock stiffening when Ren’s teeth returned to his skin. A sudden thought, terrifying: “I’m not going to see like this forever, am I?”

“It will fade,” Ren said softly, reassuringly. “It’s only the ashes. The effect is temporary.”

Well, that was something. “Okay. Are we done here? I need a drink.”

“No. Do you want to see it? I can help you.”

“See what?”

“Give me your hands.”

Ren’s grip on him was strong and sure. Hux returned it. The room seemed to darken and the flow of the shining dust through the room slowed. Particles glowed brighter in certain spots. A map of the galaxy. A hazy red aurora was materializing between them like a space storm running from Hux’s heart to Ren’s. 

It took Hux a moment to realize what he was looking at. There were more colored apparitions -- spectral threads branching off from Ren, barely visible as they shot out into this microcosm of the galaxy, some red and some blue. Hux could guess at their recipients without asking. He was privy to Ren’s true identity, as Snoke trusted him with it. The red tethers were for each of the knights; the darkest maroon one would be Snoke. The faint blue ones… one for each of his rebel parents, a third for Luke Skywalker, and the last one….

This one of the shining silvery-blue threads spun off into undecipherable distance, a planet that winked in and out of existence in different spots like a glitching map. Somewhere hot and sandy. Hux spoke aloud, twisting to watch it move. He leaned out of Ren’s lap to squint at it. “Where…?”

“I don’t know yet,” Ren answered honestly. “Come back here.” As he returned to Ren’s arms Hux realized he had no glimmering connections of his own. Sudden jealousy gripped him. It surprised him that he was capable of feeling it for a person, that dark and twisting vein of possession normally reserved for his weapon designs. He thought that if he could, he would cut each of the ties branching off of Ren as cleanly as he’d cut that false trooper’s life short for him. Ren heard his thoughts as they appeared. “If you could, I’d let you.” He said, drawing Hux in so that their chests nearly touched with a hand on his shoulder and one on the small of his back.

“Does this mean there’s no one in the galaxy I love, or no one who loves me?” Hux asked teasingly, ghosting his lips over Ren’s cheek. One of Ren’s threads was going through Hux’s chest off toward its pinpoint. He couldn't feel anything where it touched him.

A line appeared between Ren’s eyebrows. “I’m not sure.”

Before he could get too philosophical, Hux interrupted him. “It doesn’t matter. Both are true.”

“Not anymore,” Ren said, and then immediately flushed at the admission. The lobes of his ears visible in his curling hair went the reddest. Between them, the hazy red glow was weaving itself into a new thread.

“Don’t confuse sex with love. It keeps life simpler,” Hux told him.

“I don’t think that applies anymore. Simple.” Ren didn’t look troubled by that. He was smiling softly.

Hux felt his own mouth quirk up in a close-lipped smile. “No. It doesn’t.” He agreed.

The vision dissipated, and Hux blinked rapidly as his eyes adjusted. The swirling patterns were nearly gone now too, no more intrusive than the floating bubbles that he sometimes got in his eyes when he was especially tired. Ren laughed at him. Their hands gripped each other’s bodies. Gripped the scars that matched between them.

“Is that it, finally?” Hux asked. “Please let that be it.”

“We need to seal it.”

“How?”

“Exchange of essences.”

Hux snorted derisively. “Quaint. On my floor?”

“You wouldn't have let me draw the sigil on your sheets.”

“Let Millicent out,” Hux ordered. Ren glanced toward the refresher door and it slid open. Millicent’s sleek orange body appeared, her amber eyes accusing. She chirped angrily and her little talons clicked forward over the floor. She wound around them, rubbing on Ren’s thigh, and began purring before flopping on one of his feet with her belly up. “Traitor,” Hux said.

“Should I—?” Ren moved his foot half out from under Millicent’s little body and she twisted to bat at him.

“Don’t mind her. She’s spoiled.”

Ren carefully slid his foot free and Hux reached down to nudge Millicent away. Insulted, she sneezed and hopped up to her window perch.

That settled, Hux ran his hands over Kylo’s chest, admiring the feel of the muscle under his palms. The raised scars were fading in color and sinking back down into his skin.

“They won’t stay?” Hux’s were diminishing too.

“They’ll show up around kyber crystals, I think. The translation wasn’t exact. They might sting on Ilum.”

Hux thought about that as Ren’s skin went smooth and pale beneath his touch again. He didn’t think he’d mind a token of this to keep, once he descended into the frost of that planet to build his war machine. This memory would be warm.

Hux pulled Ren’s head to the side and licked up the column of his throat, humming appreciatively when Ren’s hands gripped his waist tight. Ren could nearly touch his thumbs and fingers together around Hux’s navel. They were both hard. They’d been rather consistently at half-mast, but now Ren’s ridiculous cock was flushed dark pink and hitting Hux’s stomach and leaking down it. Hux sucked a dark bruise onto Ren’s neck, grazing it with his teeth after, and Ren moaned.

“Can I--” _fuck you? Please?_ A question in two parts. Ren’s voice in his head, as deep and real as if he’d spoken aloud, but closer. It was better than the image-speak of the other knights, Hux thought. Ren’s voice inside his skull, asking so politely to finish in his ass (because that’s what was necessary, wasn’t it), made his skin prickle pleasantly.

“Lay back,” Hux told him, sitting up on his knees, and Ren seemed a bit crestfallen, but he did so, adjusting himself so that he was laying at the center of the sigil he’d drawn. “Bedside drawer.” Hux held his hand up and Ren levitated the lube from his side table into it. Hux slicked his fingers and then twisted his arm back to get at himself, starting with two.

Ren’s mouth came open. “Let me do that.”

“I don’t need you to.”

“You do.”

“Almost done anyway.” Hux added a third finger.

“You are not.”

“I like a bit of a pinch,” Hux winked, and Ren swallowed visibly, licking his lips. Hux slipped his fourth finger in just barely, though it burned, and then nodded to himself. “Ready.”

“How should I, uh…”

“You haven’t topped.” Hux had suspected as much. The thought alone of being denied orgasm with direct stimulation was maddening.

“No.”

“Hold yourself steady for a moment. After that, enjoy.”

Ren took hold of the base of his cock, and Hux positioned himself, moving forward and then lining Ren up and sitting back. He moved slow, letting gravity help Ren to spear him open, and put a hand on Ren’s chest to help him balance. When at last he was fully seated, he released a breath he hadn’t been aware he was holding. Ren’s hands were each clasped on one of his thighs.

“Stars,” said Ren, and his voice was deliciously wrecked.

Hux kept his movements small at first, adjusting to the size and weight of Ren inside him. He felt stretched to the limit. Ren was large enough that using him to hit his prostate for very long wasn’t feasible. Maybe in Hux’s academy days. His knees weren’t what they used to be. The drag of him against Hux’s walls would still be enough if Hux wasn’t careful. Ren huffed at him and Hux looked down. Ren’s face was both absurdly impressed and insanely jealous.

“Listening in?”

“I am going to find and destroy every single man who thought he deserved to feel this before me.” Ren said, his voice edging lower than normal.

“You can start with the two you let pin me down on top of you,” Hux snapped, punctuating that with a roll of his hips that dragged a helpless whine out of Ren.

“They know they don’t deserve you. _Shit_ . You gave them a gift -- _kriff_ , Hux.”

Hux had started to move at the rhythm he liked best. A bit selfish, perhaps, but he’d never had a partner complain. Ren moaned with every downthrust, infuriatingly loud and unrestrained. That was like him. Hux felt unnatural making noise, but he found he didn’t feel pressure to perform here. Ren knew what he was thinking; he could see how much Hux was enjoying himself. Even Hux's breathing barely hitched as he fucked himself down onto Ren’s cock. It was the military upbringing. The General’s room was soundproofed. His years of bunks on starships and tents on planetside duty had not been. Hux was beginning to worry that he’d work himself to release untouched before Ren finished without one of those damned Force bands, when:

“I’m going to -- ah, Hux, babe,” Ren gasped. His cock pulsed. Hux felt the throbbing of it at his rim as he drove himself down to the hilt again. “ _Oh fuck_.” Ren’s eyes fluttered closed and his hands closed like traps on Hux’s hips, holding Hux down onto him as he came. When Ren shuddered through his aftershocks, the blissed-out expression on his face made Hux’s swollen cock leak. Ren felt it land on his belly and his eyes jolted open before he realized that it was only clear precome.

Hux unseated himself, letting Ren slip out of him. In the next instant Ren was on him, rolling him over onto his back and pressing him flat against the sigil on the floor. Hux realized dimly that it was glowing like an ember. When had it begun to do that?

“‘Babe’?” Hux said incredulously. Ren chuckled and kissed his forehead before ducking down. Wet heat enveloped his cock, and this time Hux did cry out. Ren had done _this_ before. He swallowed Hux down like a pro, sucking on his way up. It made Hux’s toes curl. His right thigh spasmed against Ren’s arm, effervescence spreading out from his balls and cock, making his muscles tighten. He grabbed for Ren’s hair, wanting equally to push him down and pull him off as the sensation became too much, and then he was overflowing. Ren sucked him through it and pulled off when Hux reached for him, his hand sliding weakly across Ren’s face and catching on his nose accidentally.

Hux shivered on his floor. Ren fell onto his back beside him, their shoulders touching. The sigil beneath them flared fire-bright, lighting up the room, and then darkened, quenched, steam rising from the edges. Hux’s chest was heaving.

“How are you?” Ren asked, and the absurdity of it — he sounded as though he were asking Hux over a cup of morning caf in the officer’s lounge — made Hux cough out a shaky laugh.

“My back hurts,” Hux said. “I’m too old for a tryst on durasteel.”

“You’re thirty-four.”

“Too old.”

“Five years older than me.”

“Five years is a long time,” said Hux, thinking rather loudly that it was the exact tenure of their co-commandership so far.

Hux stood up, stretching and wincing. The sigil painted on the floor looked to have been etched dark into the durasteel. At least the cleaning droids wouldn't question it. Hux held out a hand for Ren. Ren took it and stood, allowing Hux to pull him toward the bed. They crawled in together, Hux adjusting Ren against him with quick motions until he was satisfied. One of Ren’s arms was over Hux’s frame, holding him close with his back pressed to Ren’s chest. Their breaths synchronized beneath the cool sheets, and Hux ordered the lights out.

“How does it feel to belong to the man destined to rule the galaxy?” Ren asked, kissing the nape of Hux’s neck.

“You aren’t a complete idiot, Ren, but you do give it your best effort.” Hux told him.

“Don’t call me Ren anymore.”

“Oh, you’d like me to use the first of your made-up names?”

“Ren isn’t my name. It’s my title. Use my first name and I won’t use yours,” Ren taunted.

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“You know I would. It’s how I’ll call for you on the bridge. Should I say ‘Armitage’ or ‘Armie’?”

“You’re a menace, Kylo.” Hux growled. Ren removed his arm and sat up. “Where are you going?”

Ren -- Kylo, Hux reminded himself -- smirked at him. “Sleeping on the couch.”

Hux wordlessly grabbed Kylo’s arm and pulled it over himself again. Kylo laughed against the back of his neck and pressed another kiss there, lower than before. Hux’s shoulders stiffened momentarily as his mind whirred, and then he made a choice. He turned to face Kylo, rolling over beneath the sheets and drawing Kylo in hungrily with both hands fisted in his black hair. Hux kissed him open-mouthed, sealing their lips together. The kiss was unhurried, sleepy. Sweeter than any Hux had given anyone before. When at last they parted, Kylo’s face was shocked.

“We hadn’t yet,” Hux said defensively.

“Oh. Yeah. Here,” Kylo shifted them so that Hux’s face rested on his shoulder, one muscled arm curled around his waist. “Is that good?”

“Tolerable,” Hux pressed his face against Kylo’s skin and breathed him in. For all his exhaustion, he couldn’t sleep yet. “Does the Supreme Leader know?” He asked.

Kylo’s face twitched in the gloom. “No.”

“Will he?”

“Not if I hide it.”

Hux was silent, letting that utterance and all the implications of it bounce around the durasteel walls and settle into the furnishings of his room.

“He won’t know. No one will. I’ll be extra nasty to you out there,” said Kylo, the low rumble of his voice like the slab of marble coming to rest over a tomb. Whose? Hux brought his hand up to Kylo’s chest, resting it there, above the beat of the man’s heart. A moment later, Kylo’s own broad hand covered it, holding it there.

Millicent left her perch, having deemed Hux’s bed safe for uninterrupted feline slumber. She settled next to one of Kylo’s thighs, purring loudly. The sound lulled Kylo to sleep and his deep, even breaths joined it.

Hux lay awake, the silver light of the stars outside casting shadows in his room that seemed new with someone sleeping next to him. With _Kylo_ sleeping next to him. Kylo’s pulse was steady in his palm. Held there, a life within his grasp, one he now meant to hold safe rather than crush. Hux thought again of the connections he’d seen branching out from Kylo in contrast to himself. His own heart was isolated. Or had been, before. He’d have a grand total of one shining thread now. He wondered how his tether compared to Kylo’s others. Was it thin and watery like the one that ran out of Kylo’s heart toward his father? Or bright? Bright like the unknown thread running straight into the miserable sand somewhere Kylo hadn’t yet set foot. Would this tether save his life if Snoke ordered it extinguished?

Was it equal, this thing between him and Kylo Ren? It must be, surely. That was the point. It wasn’t much insurance if they didn’t have equal stake. So if Hux felt that the thin red line of their new connection must be as bright as plasma, surely Kylo felt the same? Hux rubbed his thumb along Kylo’s chest and thought for the first time in his life that it was better not to know for certain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: one character is killed with a dagger through the eye, and one has their spinal cord severed.

**Author's Note:**

> [Kylux Spotify Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6YRMYaT5fte0cPWH5UVGW5?si=J3LTK6tkRyqlKb_taM7eHg)


End file.
